THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY
The musicians of the century--Henry Purcell and music in
England--Italy: Alessandro Scarlatti; Arcangelo Corelli; Domenico
Scarlatti--The beginnings of French opera: the _Ballet-comique de
la reine_; Cambert and Perrin--Jean Baptiste Lully--Couperin and
Rameau--Music in Germany: Keiser, Mattheson, and the Hamburg opera;
precursors of Bach.
Three-quarters of the seventeenth century produced hardly more than
experimental music. The enthusiasm of the Italians found on every hand
new ways for the development of music and they were in every branch
the innovators and the bold discoverers. In every country of Europe
their influence was felt, their guidance followed. They were the models
for the time. And, at the end of the century, what they had sown bore
fruit, both in their own country and in England, Holland, Germany, and
France. At the end of the century lasting achievement takes the place
of experiment, there are a dozen composers in every branch of music who
no longer speak with hesitation but with certainty, whose music is well
built and clear and free in style. Their activities pass well into the
next century, but they are firmly rooted in the seventeenth, and their
work should be regarded as the harvest of that time of sowing. Growing
among them were the greatest of all composers, John Sebastian Bach, and
his great compeer Georg Friedrich Handel.
I
England alone produced a truly great composer whose lifetime fell
within the century, Henry Purcell.
[Illustration: HENRY PURCELL.]
_After an old engraving._
The date of his birth has not been exactly determined. He died on
the 21st of November, 1695, at the age of only thirty-seven years. As
a boy he sang in the choir of the Chapel Royal, and when his voice
broke he was still retained as a supernumerary. In 1680 he succeeded
Dr. John Blow as organist of Westminster Abbey and held the post until
his death. He began to compose when very young and in his brief life
set his stamp upon almost every form of music then known, though he
found the first expression of his remarkable genius in music for the
stage and incidental music for plays. In this branch his opera 'Dido
and Æneas’ (1689-1691) maintains the highest excellence. What is
most striking in it, and, indeed, is most striking in all Purcell’s
music, is the genuineness of feeling. He gave his music lasting life.
There is little trace of empty formalism or of arid conventionalism
which stifled the music of so many opera composers of his day. Its
freshness is in no way stale to-day. His use of harmony as a means of
emotional expression is far ahead of any of his contemporaries, and
he had a gift of spontaneous melody which has never been excelled by
any other save perhaps Schubert. The death song of Dido in the opera
just mentioned is nearly as startling in relation to the time in which
it was written as Monteverdi’s 'Lament of Ariadne.’ A few measures of
most expressive recitative lead to the song, which, characteristically
English, is indeed a song and not the stiff aria of the day. It is a
striking example of Purcell’s skill in working over a ground bass, in
this case a descending chromatic phrase full of melancholy and pathos.
'Dido and Æneas’ is the only English opera in the strict sense of the
word. Unhappily the rich promise of a national school of English opera
which it contains was never fulfilled. Almost immediately after the
death of Purcell Italian opera invaded London and in 1711 was firmly
established there by Handel.
Purcell wrote a great deal of music for the theatre, but for the most
part in the form of songs and instrumental dances. Among the plays for
which he wrote music should be mentioned Dryden’s 'King Arthur’ and
'The Indian Queen’; 'Diocletian,’ 'The Fairy Queen,’ and the 'Tempest.’
His most important instrumental works are a set of twelve sonatas for
two violins, bass and figured bass for harpsichord, published in 1683,
and another similar set of ten published after his death by his widow,
and eight suites for harpsichord. All these are in keeping with the
general style of the time. The sonatas, the first set of which appeared
in the same year as Corelli’s opus 1, are marked by seriousness which
tends toward heaviness in comparison with Corelli’s work. They are
less spontaneous than his vocal music, but they are of high artistic
merit. The works for harpsichord are touched by the charm of English
tunefulness and are no less dainty for being conspicuously simple in
comparison with the more elaborate work of the French writers. The
greatest part of Purcell’s work must remain an isolated monument of
great genius, for it had little influence upon the general course of
music in his day. However, his anthems and semi-sacred odes hold an
important historical position, inasmuch as they contain magnificent
choruses, from a study of which Handel obviously and greatly profited.
Purcell was second to none of his contemporaries in technical skill. He
stood above them in musical power, in the fullness and virility of his
ideas, in genuineness and simplicity, in those qualities which elevate
genius above technical mastery and agreeable ease. His music rings
clear and true.
II
In Italy itself, three men stand out most prominently, Alessandro
Scarlatti, his son Domenico, and Arcangelo Corelli. Alessandro
Scarlatti is one of the most brilliant figures of the period. Unhappily
it is but another proof of the futility of opera music of that time
that so little of his work has survived. His productiveness is nothing
short of prodigious. He wrote at least 114 operas and, besides these,
500 cantatas, both for solo voice and for two voices, church music
and oratorios. Born in Sicily and living at two periods in his life
at Naples for several years, he was long held to have added a new
flavor to Italian opera and to have founded a school of opera in Naples
distinct in character from other Italian opera. But, except for the
unusual charm of his personal genius and a higher artistic instinct
than that with which most of his contemporaries were endowed, his music
hardly differs from theirs. Certainly he is one of the most important
figures in the history of music, in that he rounded Italian opera into
smooth, polished shape and left it clearly defined as a model for all
opera composers during the course of the next century. He was born in
Sicily in 1659; the exact place is not known, but his family was of
Tuscan origin. His youth was spent in Rome, where serious traditions of
music still lingered; and there, under what teachers no one knows, he
acquired a thoroughly solid foundation and that light, sure grasp of
technique which shows in his music in striking contrast to the careless
work of many a contemporary then famous. From 1684 to 1702 he was in
Naples, occupied principally in composing operas for production at
the royal palace or at the theatre of San Bartolomeo. The Neapolitan
taste was frivolous and, there can be little doubt, was harmful to the
composer, by nature inclined rather to comply with it than to defy
it. Yet by 1702 Scarlatti could stand it no longer, and for nine years
lived in various of the big Italian cities, always writing operas,
successful and highly honored. He returned to Naples in 1713. A few
years later the Neapolitans lost interest in his music and he went
again to Rome. In 1723 he was back again in Naples, quite out of favor
with the public, apparently forgotten by his own generation; and here
he died on the 24th of October, 1725. During the last year of his life
Johann Adolf Hasse, destined to universal popularity as a composer of
operas in the Italian style, was his pupil.
The great number of _da capo_ arias in Scarlatti’s works gave rise to
a belief prevalent for many years that he was the inventor of this
form, which is mainly responsible for the degeneration of Italian opera
into the state of meaningless vapidity in which it is found during the
following century; but the growth of the form and its use can be traced
in the works of his predecessors. He gave to the form, however, its
perfect outline, and, though none of his arias can be said to touch
any emotional depth, they are models of a perfect vocal style never
since excelled, and even to-day are pleasing by the faultlessness of
their structure and the elegant smoothness of their flow. Scarlatti
established this conventional form to the exclusion of all others.
How strongly it prevents dramatic action has already been shown in
a previous chapter; but Scarlatti in establishing it so firmly in
Italian opera was but complying with the demands of audiences of
his time, and should be less blamed for his acquiescence to popular
taste than praised for the beauty with which he was able to clothe
it. He bequeaths to his followers thereby one of the few valuable
accomplishments of Italian opera composers of the seventeenth century,
a form of music wonderfully adapted to show off the beauties of the
human voice.
Moreover, he may be said to have invented the accompanied recitative.
At any rate his opera _Olimpia vendicata_ (1686) gives us the earliest
known examples of it, and, though he used it seldom, that he thought
to use it at all is indicative of his genius, which, not bold enough
to explore the realm of effects in the face of a frivolous public,
might, under more favorable circumstances, have broken free of the
conventions closing tighter and tighter about Italian opera. With his
operas appear the first approximately definite models of the Italian
overture. These overtures when played with the operas to which they
were preludes were called _sinfonie_, but when played in concert apart
from the operas were called overtures. They consisted of three distinct
parts or movements--the first a solid allegro, the second a slow
expressive movement, and the last light and lively. How much the form
had influence upon the development of the symphony is shown by the fact
that several of Haydn’s early symphonies were published under the name
of overtures.
Other works even nearer general oblivion than Scarlatti’s operas are
his secular cantatas. These are less influenced by the demands of the
public, and are in general representative of his ideals. Not only
are the recitative and the arias in smooth, flawless style, but the
accompaniments, frequently enriched by instrumental parts added to
the figured bass, are full of expressive harmony. That they are less
remembered than the operas is due to the fact that the form ceased to
be cultivated after his death. Handel’s cantatas, like his operas, show
the influence of Scarlatti; but Handel’s cantatas, too, are forgotten.
In that he left in his operas a model of perfect form for that style
of opera which was popular and successful during the next century,
his influence was strongly felt, and he was imitated by countless
composers who, unhappily, fell far short of his musicianship. Hasse
was actually his pupil, Handel his follower; they alone were worthy
of their predecessor. His figure is a striking one in the history of
music, both by itself and in relation to the time which cramped and
confined it.
His friend Arcangelo Corelli won a lasting fame as the first great
violinist and composer of music for the violin. He was born at
Fusignano in Italy in February, 1653. During his early life, about
which little is known, he appears to have travelled in Germany and
France, but before 1685 he had settled in Rome, where, save for a few
journeys, he remained till the end of his life in January, 1713. In his
lifetime he lacked neither friends nor appreciation. His works achieved
immediate popularity in all the countries of Europe. Only in Naples,
whither he went in 1708, did he fail to win success. Stories of his
meetings with Scarlatti and with Handel show him to have been a man
of gentle, kindly nature, unspoiled by the homage done him by royalty
and by the first people in Italy. His position in the history of music
is of twofold importance; for not only was he a great player who laid
a firm foundation for the future development of violin technique, but
a composer who summed up in his works what had been done in music for
an ensemble of string instruments, and left models of genuine musical
worth which were to serve composers of instrumental music until the
full development of the symphony.
His works were published in six sets or _opera_, still justly famous.
Sets one and three consist of twelve _sonate da chiesa_; two and four,
of twelve _sonate da camera_. The fifth contains twelve solo sonatas
for violin with bass and figured bass; and the sixth is made up of
_concerti grossi_ for three solo instruments, called the _concertino_,
and an accompaniment for two violins, viola, violoncello, and figured
bass, called the _tutti_. The _sonate da chiesa_ and the _sonate da
camera_ differ from each other more in name than in content. The
_sonate da chiesa_ or church sonatas are, as might be expected,
of rather serious character, the chamber sonatas are more frankly
rhythmical; and, whereas the movements of the former are without titles
and stand as absolute music, those of the latter frequently bear the
names of the dance forms from which we have seen the _sonata da camera_
developed. But the two kinds are closely related. The form in which all
are cast is fundamentally tripartite, with an introductory movement.
The introduction is in a slow, solid style, after the manner of the
old pavan. The first movement proper is in the dignified contrapuntal
style of the allemande, the second in the style of the sarabande--slow
and expressive--and the last is lively and usually in the rhythm of the
gigue. They are all written for three instruments, with figured bass
for organ, harpsichord or lute. What is most striking about them, apart
from their excellent fitness for the instruments for which they were
written, is the compactness of form, the neat balance and proportion
toward which composers had been toiling during the century. Here at
last is mature instrumental music, music that can stand alone, that is
firm and articulate. In the church sonatas, it is true, he sometimes
chokes the life of the music in the contrapuntal web which was still in
his day the high serious ideal of musicians, but the chamber sonatas
are astonishingly free from it. Even more striking is the fine mastery
of form and style shown in the twelve solo sonatas. These, too, are of
the two kinds, church sonatas and chamber sonatas. In them there is no
trace of uncertainty nor of insecure experiment. Master of the violin
as he was, his treatment of the solo passages and his ornamentation
have lost none of their beauty to our ears more than two hundred
years after he wrote them. There is no trace of the slow-moving vocal
style which had so long hampered his predecessors; all is purely
instrumental. In him a great victory was won and a branch of music
established for all time. It is noteworthy, too, that he was guided
by a good taste which restrained him from writing passages merely for
technical display. The feverish desire to astonish audiences, evident
in the works of his famous contemporary, Vivaldi, is nowhere evident in
his own; and, though they may seem to lack fire on this account, they
are the more musical for being the less brilliant. His works still have
their place in the repertories of great violinists. What must strike
the listener is the just proportion between form and content, giving
them a serene dignity; for, as the form is simple, so is the emotion
equable and cool, and there is no empty pretentiousness, on the one
hand, nor inadequacy of means, on the other.
The _concerti grossi_ present a relatively new form. The first eight
are built upon the same plan as the _sonate da chiesa_; the last four
contain dance movements in the style of the _sonate da camera_. In the
eighth is the famous 'Pastorale.’ The term is used as early as 1698
(Lorenzo Gregori: _Concerti grossi_, op. 2) to signify a composition
for two or three solo instruments with more or less elaborate
orchestral accompaniment or background. The solo instruments repeat
what the orchestra plays, with some elaboration and fine shading.
Out of the _concerti grossi_ Torelli and Vivaldi developed the solo
concerto, limiting the concertino to one single violin. In this new
form the solo passages present new material independent of what the
_tutti_ has announced, and are distinct episodes filled with brilliant
pyrotechnics.
[Illustration: ARCANGELO CORELLI.]
Corelli and Scarlatti must both be given an important place in the
history of music. Of the two men, Scarlatti had the greater genius,
but he turned it to use in a form of music which could not develop
beyond where he left it, which was radically false and destined to
oblivion. Corelli, on the other hand, composing far less, gave violin
music the secure foundation upon which all later musicians have built,
and left examples of simple instrumental music which still hold their
place by force of their calm, genuine feeling. It is strange to think
of Corelli on tour in Naples some two hundred years ago, sitting
nervous and confused at the head of Scarlatti’s orchestra, stupidly
making mistakes; and of Scarlatti, then at the pinnacle of fame, polite
and kind.
Alessandro Scarlatti’s son, Domenico, was born in Naples in 1685,
during the second year of his father’s stay there. With whom he studied
is unknown, but in his youth he was both in Naples and Rome. His first
work was in Naples. In 1705 his father sent him to Venice with the
great singer Nicolino, and gave him a letter to Ferdinand de Medici in
Florence in which he wrote: 'This son of mine is an eagle whose wings
are grown; he ought not to stay idle in the nest, and I ought not to
hinder his flight.... Under the sole escort of his own artistic ability
he sets forth to meet whatever opportunities may present themselves for
making himself known--opportunities for which it is hopeless to wait in
Rome nowadays.’
In 1708 Handel came to Venice and the two men seem to have gone to Rome
together for a competition on harpsichord and organ before Cardinal
Ottoboni, the generous patron of Corelli. At any rate, the competition
took place and Handel was judged the better organist, while the victory
for harpsichord was undecided. After this the two young men, of the
same age, became warm friends. Handel shortly after established himself
in London, but Scarlatti’s life was always a wandering one. He was
at various times in the service of the Queen of Poland in Rome, as
composer for her private theatre; _maestro da capella_ of St. Peter’s,
where he composed sacred music; in London, producing his operas; in
Lisbon; and, finally, at the court of Spain, where he was appointed
music-master to the princess of the Asturias. After fifteen years in
Spain he returned to Naples, and died there in 1757. He left no money,
but his family was provided for by the great singer Farinelli, who,
likewise, had been many years at the court of Spain in highest favor.
Domenico Scarlatti’s operas and masses are now forgotten, but his
fame as a composer for the harpsichord is immortal. What Chopin and
Liszt did for the pianoforte music of their day Scarlatti did for
music for the harpsichord in his. It has been often said that he was
the founder of the pianoforte style. This is true, unless the French
composer François Couperin shares the honor with him. Of the brilliant
virtuoso style he is unquestionably the founder. His instinct for style
and form made no false step, and his music is astonishingly sparkling
and fresh when played by modern virtuosi on the modern pianoforte.
The works of his French contemporaries, Couperin and Rameau, are
unmatched in delicacy and grace and a most refined sentiment; still
it may be said that their charm to modern ears consists not a little
in an exquisite old-fashioned spirit which breathes from a court life
long since ruthlessly stamped under foot, whereas Scarlatti’s music
compels attention and admiration even to-day by its vigor, flash, and
daring. Moreover, it is free as air from all heaviness of rhythm or
of contrapuntal intricacies and yet is none the less clear-cut and
perfect in form. It is, first of all, virtuoso music. Most of the
pieces demand the utmost speed and lightness of touch. Among the most
difficult devices he frequently employed is the crossing of hands,
by which he obtained instrumental effects hardly less brilliant than
those of Liszt. And yet his music is not all empty display. There
is an epigrammatic clearness about it which has the sparkle of all
genuine wit, irrespective of the time which gave it birth, and at times
there is a masculine touch of poetry, enriched by various expressive
harmonies, notably in one, the most famous of his sonatas, that in D
minor, which is familiar to all concert-goers in the elaborated form
and higher key into which Tausig has transcribed it. Unlike other
composers in his day, he did not set four or five pieces together in a
suite, but kept his pieces separate, and called each one a sonata or
an exercise. Nor did he label any of them with the dainty suggestive
names that became the fashion in France and Germany. They are all short
and all in the same form. Each is made up of two sections, one of which
begins in the tonic and modulates to the dominant, or, if the key is
minor, to the relative major; the other from this key back to end in
the tonic, frequently by way of contrasting remote keys. Both sections
are repeated in their turn. The effect is one of precise balance and
clearness. There are generally two quite distinct figures or even
themes which are employed in such a way as to suggest the sonata form
of later development, the first given at the start in the tonic key,
the second in the second part of the first section in the dominant or
relative major; and the sparkling liveliness of the pieces depends not
a little on the contrast and play of these two distinct figures, their
neat and regular arrangement, and the satisfying return of them in
the second section of the piece. Such an aptness, such a clear-headed
wit is hardly met with anywhere else in music. If the glitter of
Scarlatti’s harpsichord music is sometimes hard, it is never false. It
is the glitter of a diamond, not of tinsel. It has never tarnished.
It flashes brilliantly from an age when much was false--clean-cut,
polished, impervious, and, in its pointed way, defiant.
Thus in Italy three men sum up the seventeenth century and inaugurate
the eighteenth. They were not alone in their day, but their
contemporaries, once equally famous, have for the most part sunk into
an oblivion from which only the enthusiastic historian recovers them.
And even the most gifted of these three, Alessandro Scarlatti, becomes
daily less a substance and more a shade, though what there was of
intrinsic worth in the Italian opera of that time was developed and
adorned by him to stand as a model for Handel, for Haydn and Mozart,
and for Rossini and Verdi. Corelli, his friend, and Domenico Scarlatti,
his son, built with less perishable stuff and on the foundations which
they laid for the branches of music in which they were adept great
monuments have been reared. Their genius and their musicianship were
less great than those of the elder Scarlatti, but their compositions
were of a piece with reality, not, like his, the adornment of a false
and meaningless convention. Hence their music still speaks for itself
to-day, a language sometimes thin, but in the main clear and strong,
whereas others must speak for Scarlatti. In the oratorios of Handel
and in the vocal works of Bach the best of what the Italian opera
composers of the seventeenth century accomplished was perpetuated, and
Scarlatti was unquestionably the greatest of these composers. The seeds
of his genius were thus transplanted from the sterile soil in which
circumstances had forced him to sow them and they bore fruit in strange
forms and alien lands.
So ended the supremacy of the Italians in the history of music. After
the death of Scarlatti the Neapolitan opera became wholly trivial. The
list of composers is long. Some are distinguished by a certain elegance
of style, such as Feo, Vinci, and Cafaro, others by a cleverness in
handling the orchestra, such as Durante, and still others, notably
Porpora and Leo, were very great teachers of singing; but for the most
part they were all as like as eggs and none added anything of lasting
value to music. The comic opera alone had any real life. This, the last
creation of the Italians, was powerful in directing the course of music
and will be treated in another chapter.
III
What Alessandro Scarlatti did for opera in Italy, Lully had done for
opera in France. The French opera, like the English opera, of which
we have the one splendid example in Purcell’s 'Dido and Æneas,’
was of quite distinct origin from the Italian. Whereas the Italian
opera sprang from attempts to restore the method of combining music
and dramatic declamation, practised by the Greeks, the French opera
developed from a form of entertainment that had long flourished in
France and was dear to the hearts of the French people--the ballet.
The famous _Ballet-comique de la royne_ given in Paris at the Petit
Bourbon on the 15th of October, 1581, in honor of the marriage of the
Duc de Joyeuse and Mademoiselle de Vaudemont, sister of King Henry
III, is in a sense the first attempt in France toward what we now
call opera. It was a magnificent spectacle in which songs, choruses,
and dancing played a part. The plan of it was made by Baltasar de
Beaujoyeaulx, whose real name was Baltasarini, groom of the chamber
to the king and the queen mother (Catharine de Medici). The music was
by the Sieur de Beaulieu, whose true name was probably Lambert, and
another composer named Salmon, and the verses were by one named La
Chesnaye. A few excerpts from a contemporary account of the performance
will best illustrate what the ballet was. It was given before the king
and his mother and an assemblage of the highest nobles in France. As
for the overture the writer of the account says: 'After some measure
of silence had been established there came from behind the walls the
sound of oboes, cornets, sackbuts (trombones), and other sweet-toned
instruments.’ After this the Sieur de la Roche, escaping from a garden
at the back of the hall, came and delivered an address before the king.
He was followed by the sorceress Circe, from whom he had evidently
escaped and who was bent on having him back again. But he eluded her
and she returned to her garden. Then three sirens and a triton appeared
and sang a chorus, which was echoed by singers concealed in a golden
arch at the back of the hall. They disappeared and an immense fountain
was drawn upon the stage by two sea-horses; and about the fountain
twelve naiads were grouped, among whom were ladies of highest rank,
covered with gold and jewels. The fountain was drawn round the room,
spouting 'real water,’ surrounded by eight tritons playing lutes,
harps, etc., and by a dozen pages or more bearing lighted torches, all
singing. After this chorus, Glaucus and Thetis took their place in
chairs at the foot of the fountain and sang a little dialogue to which
the tritons answered in chorus. The fountain was then drawn off behind
Circe’s garden, and ten violinists came forward, dressed in white satin
hung with gold, and played for the first dance which was taken by the
twelve pages and the twelve naiads who had returned. Circe appeared,
furious, from her garden and laid all the dancers under her spell so
that they stood motionless, and then she retired to her garden swollen
with victory. Suddenly there was a loud clap of thunder and Mercury
appeared, descending in a cloud from which he sang. He then stepped
from his cloud and freed the dancers from Circe’s spell, whereupon they
at once took up the dance again. Mercury went back to his cloud and
Circe came again upon the scene and bewitched not only the dancers, but
Mercury himself, whose cloud would not conceal him, so that they all
followed her two by two into her fatal garden. And here the garden was
brilliantly lit, and the spectators saw walking therein a stag, a dog,
an elephant, a lion, a tiger, and various other beasts who were once
men, who now had undergone Circe’s spell. The first act ended here.
The second act opened with a five-part song for satyrs to which the
golden vault replied in echo. A forest advanced across the floor of
the hall, a forest with a rock in the middle and oak trees hung with
garlands of gold, and four dryads to whom the satyrs sang a song of
welcome. The forest went before the king and from its leafy depths
a young dryad delivered a speech to him; then the forest turned to
the left and proceeded to Pan’s grotto. Here Pan welcomed the dryads
with a tune on his flute and they complained to him of Circe who had
imprisoned not only their playmates the naiads, but Mercury himself as
well. Thereupon Pan promised his aid and the wood went away. Entered
then the four virtues, two of whom played upon the lute while the other
two sang a little duet. The golden vault responded with an instrumental
piece in five parts, and then Minerva approached in a car drawn by a
huge serpent, Minerva bringing the head of Medusa. She delivered yet
another address to the king and invoked Jupiter, who, after a few
claps of thunder, descended in a cloud. He stood on his cloud and sang
a song, after which the cloud deposited him upon the floor and he
went off with Minerva to Pan’s grotto. Poor Pan was soundly scolded
by Minerva for having let Circe steal away the naiads and Mercury.
Pan, though replying that the power to overcome Circe belonged alone
to Minerva, none the less started off for Circe’s garden followed by
eight satyrs armed with knobbed and thorny clubs. Minerva went along,
too, to the assault, but Jupiter was left alone on the stage. Once
before Circe’s stronghold, that wily lady harangued her assailants
and made fun of Minerva and of Jupiter. To Jupiter she said: 'If any
one is destined to triumph over me, it is the king of France, to whom
you, even as I, must yield the realm you possess.’ Minerva and her
heroes broke down the door of Circe’s garden and Jupiter struck the
lady herself with a thunderbolt, who thereupon fell senseless to the
floor. Minerva got possession of the magic wand, released those who had
been chained by Circe’s spell, and at last restored Circe herself, who
joined with her to lead a procession of all who had taken part in the
play around the hall. Then followed a grand ballet before the king.
This performance of the _Ballet-comique de la royne_ lasted five hours
and a half and the cost of producing it was more than three million six
hundred thousand francs. This was approximately a century before the
performance of 'Berenice’ in Padua, of which mention has been made in
a previous chapter; but whereas the Italian opera degenerated into a
scenic display, the French opera resulted from a cutting down of lavish
extravagance and uniting the various scenes and choruses with musical
declamation.
The ballet remained the favorite diversion of the French court down
to the middle of the seventeenth century, though the splendor of this
_Ballet-comique_ was never reproduced. Though it approached what we now
call opera, it remained differentiated from opera in a few fundamental
points. Parts were taken by members of the court society, the whole
entertainment was planned to flatter the king so that the lines spoken
by the players were often directed to the monarch in the manner of
Circe’s lesson to Jupiter which we have just quoted, and there were
long addresses without music and without relation to the plot of the
ballet.
In 1645 and 1646 Cardinal Mazarin invited Italian singers to give an
exhibition of their opera in Paris. They were coldly received. In
Perrin’s famous letter to his protector, the Cardinal de la Rovera,
April 30, 1659, the Italian music was likened to plain-song and airs
from the cloister. Yet it was with the aim of making an opera for the
French on the plan of the Italian opera that Perrin wrote his Pastoral
in 1659, for which Cambert composed the music. This pastoral in music,
called sometimes _L’opéra d’Issy_, was performed at Issy near Paris
with great success. There was present such a crowd of princes, dukes,
peers, and marshals of France that the whole way from Paris to Issy
was thronged with their coaches. There was not room in the hall for
all who came. Those who could find no place were patient, promenading
through the gardens or holding court on the lawns. By express order
of his majesty Louis XIV, the Pastoral was repeated at the palace of
Vincennes. So French opera was inaugurated.
Of Cambert, who wrote the music, little is known. He had lessons on
the harpsichord from Chambonnières, the Nestor of French clavecinists,
he was organist at the Church of St. Honoré, and following the success
of the Pastoral he was appointed superintendent of music to Anne
of Austria, mother of Louis XIV. For more than ten years after the
Pastoral Perrin and Cambert kept relatively silent. There are a few
drinking songs by Cambert which belong to this time, but the two men
rest in obscurity until the first performance of their opera _Pomone_
on the 19th of March, 1671, at the Tennis Court near the Rue Guénégaud.
In 1669 Perrin had obtained from Louis XIV the permit 'to establish
throughout the kingdom academies of opera, or representations with
music in the French language after the manner of those in Italy.’
Perrin secured Cambert to write music for these representations, and
_Pomone_, their joint product, is the first opera publicly performed in
Paris. A great part of their singers had been recruited from churches
in the country, but the success of this first performance was enormous.
Only the music of one act has been preserved. It is childish, but at
moments may stand favorably by that of Lully. What makes it so heavy to
our ears are the long passages of dull, unrhythmical recitative which,
from the point of view of music, are vague and ill-formed.
To Cambert and Perrin must be given the honor of having established
French opera. To them was awarded the first royal warrant to give
opera throughout the kingdom. _Pomone_ was an auspicious beginning;
but within a year trouble had come between the two men, and Cambert’s
next opera was set to words by another poet, Gilbert, well known in his
day. And then, apparently as sequence to the split between Cambert and
Perrin, Cambert was himself deprived of his royal rights, the opera was
given into the hands of one sole man, who had long been plotting to
acquire it, and Cambert departed to England.
IV
This one man, Jean Baptiste Lully (or Lulli), was born in Florence
or near there in 1633. He had come to Paris when a boy of twelve or
thirteen in the suite of the Duc de Guise, knowing little of music,
save the guitar. He had been a kitchen boy in the service of Mlle.
de Montpensier, and now, in 1672, was given sole control over opera
throughout the kingdom of France. The way in which he won favor with
the king shows him to have been an intriguer, and the king to have had
little genuine appreciation of music apart from the tunes to which
he danced in the court ballets. Lully was at first admitted into the
king’s band of violins, and later was made head of a special band.
Not only was he a ready composer of dances to the king’s taste; he was
himself a dancer and a mimic. In Molière’s comedy-ballets to which he
was commissioned to compose music he often acted with much-admired
skill. As to his treatment of Molière the less said perhaps the better.
He was a skillful manager, he was always ready with some amusement for
the court. From the start he played for the royal favor, and he won it.
Not only was he given the sole authority to produce operas in France;
Cambert was even denied the right to produce his as well.
Lully had no systematic training as a musician, but he learned from all
he came in contact with; from Cambert, who had written music for the
ballets; from Cavalli, who came to Paris with his _Xerxes_ in 1660;
and again with _Ercole amante_ in 1662, to both of which Lully was
commissioned to set ballets that they might meet with the requirements
of French courtly taste. From 1672, when he gained control of the
opera, to his death, in 1687, he wrote an opera, a _tragédie lyrique_,
every year. His manner of composing, according to Lecerf de la Viéville
(1705) was as follows: 'He read the libretto until he knew it nearly by
heart; he would then sit down at his harpsichord, sing over the words
again and again, pounding the harpsichord; his snuff-box at one end of
it, the keys dirty and covered with tobacco (for he was very slovenly).
When he had finished singing and had got his songs well in his head,
his secretaries, Lalouette or Collasse, came, and to them he dictated.
The next day he could hardly remember what he had dictated.’
Lully was a clever, exceedingly intelligent man, a good actor, a good
clown, a good dancer, an unscrupulous plotter, an iron disciplinarian.
Not only did he write the music to his operas, he superintended and
often remodelled the libretti furnished him by Quinault, the poet of
his own choosing. He was indefatigably painstaking. He coached the
singers even to the way they should enter and leave the stage, and he
drilled the orchestra so that it had a precision, the traditions of
which endured for more than a century. He was not a great musician.
One may believe that he left the filling out of his harmonies to his
secretaries, Lalouette and Collasse. His airs and his choruses are in
the ballet style of the century. Only in recitative did he accomplish
anything new. He wrote his operas at the same time Racine was producing
many of his most famous tragedies--Racine, who was a master of verse
and of declamation; and he modelled his recitative according to
Racine’s art of declamation. The great law of it is that it shall be
syllabic, one syllable to one musical tone. Music is here in strict
bondage to words. Lecerf says that the recitative as developed by
Lully is a just mean between tragic declamation and the art of music.
According to L. de la Laurencie[139] a comparison of Lully’s recitative
with the recitative of Carissimi or of Provenzale shows that Lully
proceeded to a clearing of the Italian technique, cutting from it all
the absurd weeds which the taste for _bel canto_ and even musical taste
in the strict sense had let grow in the garden of melody. We have in
the recitative of Lully, then, something that is not music, but a mean
between declamation and music. Often stiff and monotonous, it is only
rarely impassioned and effective. Always the words, the rhyme and the
verse are of paramount importance. In this regard it was so much to
the taste of the French audiences, of the _précieux_, that Lully’s
operas came to be valued far more for their recitative than for their
airs. The recitative became not an artificial bond between airs and
choruses, but the main burden of the opera, as indeed it should be; and
in this respect he is a great reformer and akin to Monteverdi on the
one hand and Gluck on the other. He is the founder of the admirable
French style of declamation. Thus the opera of Lully and the opera
of Scarlatti are strikingly different. Both were bound to a strict
public convention, but Scarlatti wrote for the _bel canto_, Lully for
declamation; the Italians craved the sensuous beauty of the voice in
song and let the drama go; the French demanded intelligent declamation,
and sacrificed music. Of the two the French opera was essentially more
rational and nearer artistic truth, though even in Lully’s lifetime it
became wholly stereotyped; and neither form as it left the hands of its
finisher was capable of further development until infused with new life
by a great reformer such as Gluck.
[Illustration: JEAN-BAPTISTE de LULLY.]
To Lully as a musician belongs the credit of having given definite form
to his overtures. The so-called French overture as he established it
was generally in two parts or movements--the first slow and serious,
the second lively and in vigorous, fugal style. Sometimes a third
movement recalling the first was added. These overtures were much
admired in their day and during the next century, and the form was
adopted by most of the German composers as the first movement of the
orchestral suite, and by Handel for overtures to his oratorios. Lully
seems to have been most successful in instrumental music of a 'noble
and martial kind.’ Marches from his operas were actually played for
soldiers in the field, and 'when the prince of Orange wanted marches
for his troops, he had recourse to Lully, who sent him one.’ All of
Lully’s airs and especially his dance tunes have a simplicity and a
clearness of outline which secured to them a popularity not forgotten
even to-day. It is music easy to remember, vigorous in rhythm and in
sentiment, positive and definite, often poor in harmony and grace and
never subtle, but on the other hand never vague or weak. As far as it
goes it goes unfalteringly and with a sureness that challenges respect
and is at times superb.
After the death of Lully, early in 1687, French opera subsisted
upon what he had left it. There was no man to take over his supreme
dictatorship and until 1723, when Rameau began to write for the stage,
no operas of any influence were written in Paris. Conventional form was
too strong even for a man like Charpentier, whose musical gifts seem to
have been higher than Lully’s. Desmarets, Des Touches and Campra are
hardly more than imitators of Lully. Lully stands alone in the history
of French opera during the seventeenth century as absolute a despot
in the realm of music as his great patron, Louis XIV, over the lands
of Europe. He won his place by intrigue, he kept it by an enormous
strength of will and perseverance and by shrewd observation of the
court taste.
There was no more genuine critical appreciation of music in France
during the gorgeous reign of Louis XIV than there was in Italy, Germany
or England at the same time. According to M. Combarieu,[140] there was
no more real public than there were true critics--a few wits writing
verses and publishing their dislikes or their flatteries, their naïve
admiration for banal prowess in virtuosity. The mark of the king is on
all music; music for the king’s ballets, for the king’s opera, for the
king’s suppers, for the king’s fêtes, and above it all the haughty,
majestic king. Lully and Racine, Lully and Molière!
V
In salon music courtly elegance shines in miniature. After the death
of Lully a young man grew into prominence who was to win from the king
his own appellation, the Great--François Couperin. He was born of a
family of famous musicians in Paris in 1668. From 1693 he was organist
to the king in the chapel at Versailles, and in 1696 he was elected
organist of St. Gervais, a post which had been held for many years by
members of his family; but though he is said to have been an excellent
organist, his fame now rests upon his skill in playing and writing for
the _clavecin_. He was private teacher to princes and princesses, to
the highest ladies of the land, and never by one note did he offend
against the precise and elegant etiquette in the midst of which he
was formed. He was an exquisite dainty stylist in music, a painter of
delicate miniature portraits. Porcelain is not more fragile than his
music, nor crystals of frost clearer cut. There is no suggestion of
feeling too deep for elegance. A touch of courtly tenderness, a mood of
courtly melancholy are the _nadir_ of his emotion. His little works for
the _clavecin_ are masterpieces of form and style. They never suggest
the great power of music to express the fire of man’s heart and the
struggle of his soul.
Lacking the daring brilliance of Scarlatti’s sonatas, they are none
the less perfectly suited to the thin, frosty instrument for which
they were written. For many years they stood as perfect models of
harpsichord style and their influence can be traced in the works of all
his contemporaries, even in those of J. S. Bach. Four sets of them were
printed in 1713, 1717, 1722, and 1730. There are twenty-seven suites
or _ordres_, each containing a varying number of little pieces which
no longer bear dance names nor emphasize dance rhythms, but are given
suggestive, dainty names after the style of Gaultier and Chambonnières.
Many of them are portraits of court ladies of the time. _La douce
et piquante_, _La majestueuse_, _L’enchantresse_, _L’engageante_,
_L’attendrissante_, _L’ingénue_, etc. Others affect the fashionable
pastoral romance, such as _Les bergeries_, _Le barolet flottant_,
_La fleurie, ou la tendre Nanette_; others are bits of delicate
realism, _Les petits moulins à vent_, _Le carillon de Cythère_, etc.;
and a few have highly colored names such as _Fureurs bachiques_ and
_Les enjouements bachiques_. Besides these _ordres_ he published
transcriptions of works by Corelli and Lully which were called
_Apothèse de Corelli_, and _Apothèse de l’incomparable Lully_.
In all his work there is an unblemished purity of style, a charm
of melody, a delicate sense of harmony. They are all very highly
ornamented with trills, mordants, turns, etc., which often sound too
heavy on the modern pianoforte, but which were necessary in music
for the harpsichord with its thin tone and lack of all sustaining
power. His 'Art of Playing the Harpsichord,’ published in 1717, had
an enormous influence. A passage of it almost brings Couperin, court
clavecinist, before our eyes. These are his directions for having a
correct appearance when playing: 'One should turn the body a little to
the right while at the harpsichord. Do not keep the knees too close
together; have the feet parallel, but the right foot a little forward.
One can easily correct oneself of the habit of making faces while
playing by putting a mirror on the desk of the harpsichord. It is much
more becoming not to mark time with the head, the body, or the feet.
One must affect an easy appearance before the _clavecin_, without
looking too fixedly at any one object, nor on the other hand looking
vague. Look at the audience, if there is one, as if one were doing
nothing in particular (this for those who play without their notes).’
Undoubtedly here is a refinement of art which has never since been
equalled, a neatness and precision in every detail; but it brought
with it a self-consciousness and a suppression of virile emotion, made
of music an exquisite toy and of the musician a courtier. Couperin’s
music suffers more by being played on the modern pianoforte than
that of his contemporaries, Scarlatti, Handel, and Bach. The greater
sonority of tone clouds the fragile perfect workmanship. There is in it
no depth of emotion nor daring brilliance to meet the strength of the
new instrument. As music they belong to their time; as works of perfect
art they are imperishable.
Couperin died in 1733, just as the last and greatest of the French
composers of this time, Jean Philippe Rameau, was about to bring out
his first opera, _Hippolyte et Aricie_. Rameau was fifty years old. His
life had been hard and varied. He had been organist in a provincial
town; he had published sets of pieces for harpsichord in Paris; he
had published in 1722 a treatise on harmony, the first of his many
important works on that subject; he had been engaged in writing ballets
for the theatre, and made himself a favorite music-master among ladies
of high rank. At the house of La Pouplinière he had met Voltaire and
with him had written an opera, 'Samson,’ which had been forbidden by
the Academy on the eve of its performance. At last, on the 1st of
October, 1733, _Hippolyte et Aricie_ was produced at the Academy. It
brought a storm of abuse upon the composer who had dared to attempt
more than a slavish imitation of Lully. He gradually won some respect
and continued to write operas, among which _Castor et Pollux_ (1737),
commonly considered his masterpiece, achieved a marked and continued
success. However, no success would silence his detractors. Rousseau
made himself the mouthpiece for those who cried him down. And in 1746,
just when he had succeeded in overcoming the violent hostility of the
Lullists, a company of Italian singers at the _Comédie italienne_
won over a half of the Parisian public so that Rameau found himself
engaged in another and yet fiercer struggle as defender and head of
French music against the Italian invaders. The malice and brutality
of this famous _Guerre des bouffons_ are incredible, but the whole
affair points unmistakably to a state of society in which all critical
judgment had given way to unenlightened prejudiced controversy. Rameau
won but a temporary victory. After his death, in 1764, Italian opera
was supreme in Paris until the arrival of Gluck.
Rameau’s operas are æsthetically different from Lully’s. Less skillful
than Lully in recitative, he far excels him in genuineness of feeling
and in harmony. Rameau was a great musician. His studies in harmony
were profound and far-reaching in their effect, and the texture of
his music was softened and warmly colored by a richness of chords
and modulation. His works for the harpsichord are not so polished
as Couperin’s, but are more virile; and the last set (1736) shows
the influence of Scarlatti. What is most striking about him is his
independence of court life and convention. Lully was backed by the
most powerful monarch in Europe, whose protection assured him success.
Rameau had nothing to hope for from the debauched court of Louis XV, in
spite of the official royal recognition. He withstood the most venomous
attacks alone, and by the courage and power of his own will made
himself head and champion of the music of his country.
VI
At the end of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the
eighteenth, Germany was under the influence of the French and of the
Italians. In Hamburg there was the nearest approach to a national
spirit. Hamburg was one of the most brilliant opera towns, but, whereas
in Dresden, Berlin, Munich, and Vienna the Italian opera was supreme
and Italian singers and Italian composers held sway, in Hamburg
operas were with few exceptions given in German and were furnished by
German composers. It must be said, however, that most of the composers
were strongly under the influence of the Italians or of Lully, and
many of the _libretti_ were translations or adaptations of Italian
_libretti_. Chief among the composers stands Reinhard Keiser, a man
of loose principles and luxurious life, but of extraordinary musical
facility. Apart from a great deal of sacred music, he wrote not less
than one hundred and sixteen operas. It was while he was at the height
of his fame that Handel came to Hamburg.
[Illustration: JEAN-PHILIPPE RAMEAU.]
At Hamburg also was Johann Mattheson, first of all a singer under
Keiser, then a conductor and composer. But his compositions have
all been forgotten, and he is important now only as the writer
of 'Foundations for a German Roll of Honor’ and 'The Complete
Kapellmeister,’ both of which are the source of much that is known
about German music previous and up to his time. The Roll of Honor is a
series of short biographies of German composers. Living composers were
asked to write an account of themselves for it. Bach seems to have been
invited to do so and to have declined the invitation. Mattheson is also
remembered for his duel with Handel.
The most prolific of all composers in Germany was Telemann, friend of
Mattheson and Handel, but of his works nothing is remembered. Of more
importance is Karl Heinrich Graun, who was head of the Italian opera in
Dresden and Berlin, and whose _Te Deum_, composed after the victory of
Frederick the Great at Prague (1756), and _Tod Jesu_ are still heard.
As precursor of Bach in the St. Thomas school in Leipzig, Kuhnau is
of interest. He was a staunch musician of the old school, a man of
remarkable learning. In the history of German clavier music he is the
most important figure before Bach. His _Sonata aus dem B_ seems to be
the first piece of clavier music in three movements not dance tunes.
They were published in Leipzig in 1695. In the next year appeared his
'Fresh Clavier Fruit or Seven Sonatas’ and after those his 'Biblical
Sonatas,’ which are surely among the most curious records of music in
an age gone by. They are frankly program music. Each sonata consists of
a number of little pieces illustrative of some story from the Bible.
There are the story of David and Goliath, the story of Jacob and Leah,
the story of Saul and David. It was in imitation of them that Bach
wrote his only piece of program music, the Capriccio on the departure
of his brother to the wars.
J. J. Fux was from 1698 to 1741 a court composer in Vienna, greatly
beloved and admired. He is remembered more as a teacher than as a
composer, and his text book in the form of dialogues _Gradus ad
Parnassum_ was for a century one of the standard books on composition.
In Dresden the figure of Hasse, the Saxon, becomes prominent after
1731. He was perhaps the most successful opera composer of his day.
Probably not a little of his success was due to the glorious singing of
his wife Faustina. Hasse, too, was a friend of Handel and of Bach.
Keiser, Mattheson, Telemann, Graun, Hasse, Kuhnau, and a host of
others, all prominent in their day, have been forever obscured by the
glory of J. S. Bach and Handel. As we have chosen Purcell, Scarlatti,
Corelli, Lully, Couperin and Rameau to represent what the musical
genius of England, Italy and France was able to build upon the
foundation of Italian experiment in the first half of the seventeenth
century, so we must choose Bach and Handel to represent Germany.
Germany was a little behind the other nations of Europe to present
what the sum of a century was to her. This was partly owing to the
destruction of the Thirty Years War from which she was slow to recover,
partly because she had no central capital like London and Paris to
foster the best of her native genius. Yet all the experiment, all the
enthusiasm, all the labor of the seventeenth century are gathered up
in the work of her two great sons; all other composers of all other
nations are small beside their genius.
L. H.
FOOTNOTES:
[139] _Le goût musical en France_ (1905).
[140] _Histoire de la musique_, Vol. I.